Recently, I heard some talk about a "Falkow Speed Deck," which was said to be semi-competitive. However, I have never seen or played against one, at least not to my knowledge. I suppose it would be a deck that played low-level cards and did as much damage as early as possible, a la your typical aggro strategy, but it seems like Gowen would be better at an early rush than the fragile Falkow dudes.

Hypothetically, what would a Falkow aggro rush file look like? Is this deck really competitive, even in the face of high-level unit decks?

"There is nothing you can see that is not a flower, nothing you can think of that is not the moon." ~Bashio

It's competitive if your opponent doesn't have tons of direct damage multi-targeting grimiores in their soul card lineup. (Which they almost always do).

Good cards to use are Haste Soldier, Swallow Scout, Wizard Soldier of Regus, Wizard Archer of Regus, Enchanter, and maybe Sylph Sorceress. The trick to this file is having Ex Vordore and Azure Beastmaster in your soul cards. You build up field presence quickly with your low level units which can hopefully handle your opponent's opening units using the edge on agi, and when one of your cards go the remaining ones gain incredible attack/defense/hp/etc buffs which let them steamroll your opponents early game. Of course, one row clearing card can pretty much send your entire strategy down the drain. This strategy would benefit greatly from having a good tank in the front lines, such as Sea Claw or Sea Hunter, but since you spend all of your sp early on setting level 1s and 2s and reviving your easily killable level 1s and 2s the sp to do it just doesn't build up. I tried playing such a file back when the expansion came out and it's not bad, it'll definitely steamroll people using slow openings and mostly single-targeting soul cards, but it can run out of steam very quickly if the opponent is on par with agi or has annoying double or triple targeting soul cards.

It might work better if you somehow get Mage Paladin Distrier out on the field, since your units will buff his attack up and once they die off you can use the sp to put his def through the roof. Renally could also work since she can provide some much-needed lifespan to your front line cards and also knock off units pretty fast herself. Water Dragon could also work well for a late-game unit.

In all honesty its not worth your time over all. Stick to a return based deck since it is more effective. The reason I say that is the strength of falkow is not insane damage but tempo control. If you are able to control tempo you have a higher chance to win. Unlike Gowen, your hp and average agi isn't high enough to take field dominance. Lawtia's Fenir and Skel Warrior are going to have intiative and set up for dalos who is going to wipe your field. If you face control focused Falkow one good cyclone screws you over. Stick with the fundamentals of Falkow and you can't go wrong.

If you mean just using the "return" grimore card, then yes, not a good idea. However Falkow has other cards able to return higher level opponents. The combination of the two I believe is what your after. Though I never play as Falkow so I could be talking out of my rear.

Wintermute wrote:I've been advised against a return-centric Falkow deck on the basis that it is practically ineffective against high-level unit decks, which seem to be popular about now. Have I been misinformed?

Completely. Mystere is an effective(expensive, perhaps) way to tackle those lvl 6+Behemoths. She should be used as a safety net against really nasty things that the rest of your deck can't handle-run 3 copies of her at all times because you can be sure your opponent will throw grims at her if possible. To counter this, run 2 copies of black cat early on in the game to get rid of them so you can be sure that when you play mystere, you don't have to worry about grims.

Witch is also a good form of early returns (especially against Gowen rush), however I feel that Expert Sorc is garbage. I can explain if you'd like to know why.

Ok, first off Expert costs 3 SP to summon-which you'll eventually get back depending on whether or not you let him die or not. His ability however, costs 3 SP and he's as slow as dung-this means you'll have to wait 2 turns of SP before you can even use his ability AND he might die because of the waiting (he's slow+waiting for SP). If your not bouncing anything that's level 4, you're trading SP-some would argue you gain field position for it, but remember how much time you spent just to summon and bounce one unit? Ridiculous.

Mystere has the same ability for the same cost with no level cap limit-which makes her far superior. The only limitation being that she requires something to manipulate the enemy units AGI before she can bounce it and she has a RNG of 3 (not too much of a problem if your opponent has only 1-2 fatty units). I've actually used a Sylph on an enemy unit before because I had already used my undines just to bounce it-and it worked. It's not desirable, but it is an option.

Unless you run up against other falkow return focused decks work pretty good on average. I win about 2/3rd's of my games because of my falkow deck. I also have damage focused soul skills to maintain that I have unit dominance and field dominance as much as possible. I also built around azure beast master and Femeil for speed dominace. Harpy helps things out a ton more then I thought it would. At the other end this deck lets you deal with the common decks and not the super elite decks.

I forgot to mention, splashing in a couple Exploding Spores while using Azure Beastmaster as a soul card is very effective. Not only will the spore do 30 damage to all enemy units upon death once buffed up, it'll also have 30 attack if it manages to survive the until it gets to go. It's good way to keep your opponents from smashing down on your front line relentlessly, which is key for this strategy, since there's a good chance they'll just kill all of their own units.